I swore I wouldn’t get sucked in. I vowed to elope (with my family there and a big white wedding dress [the two things I couldn’t give up] of course). I decided to keep it small. Etc. And here I am stressing over budget, details, dresses, and so on. Wedding dress shopping isn’t fun – it’s something I want checked off my list. Things have a way of costing more than you anticipated – because there’s so much pressure on the day to be perfect and unique and basically a fairy tale that naturally it’s easy to pay more…and more. Chris comes home from work to find me snappy and up to my eyeballs in wedding stress.

Time to take a step back. What matters most is walking down the isle to my partner, holding his hand and vowing to be there for each other…having our sweet baby – who will probably be tearing off her daisy crown and twisting uncooperatively in someone’s arms – there with us. Oh, and the dress. The dress always, always matters.

Dress shopping with a 4-month old is not quite the same since you must factor in naptimes and screaming fits, and that perhaps is the reason most people wait until after marriage to have children. At the same time, there was something quite amazing about seeing my adorable daughter with her big blue eyes smiling up at me in my wedding dress.

So I most certainly won’t please everybody no matter how much pressure I put on myself to do so, and the DJ may play the wrong song for our first dance, and the cake may crash to the floor in a million frosting-y crumbs (though I hope not because it’s certain to be beautiful and delicious), but I’ll try to let it roll like water off a duck’s back. This will require months of mental preparation on my part.